


Some Loose Ends and the Computational Error: Transrational

by pisoprano



Series: Some Loose Ends and the Computational Error: Early Chapter Postings [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 21:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pisoprano/pseuds/pisoprano
Summary: Chapter 1 will appear on another widely used fanfiction site shortly...for now, the Well of Lost Plots-centric chapters will continue to begin existence here on Ao3.(I just wanted to post while it was still Epilogue Day in some part of the world.  Happy 1 September 2017 everybody!)





	Some Loose Ends and the Computational Error: Transrational

**Author's Note:**

> A yellow book dropped onto Blair’s desk.  
> “There’s no excuse for you to keep Remus in the Well now,” the interloper said. “Long range time travel is canon. Has been for over a year of real time now. Logically, I can just send him back to his ‘real world.’”  
> Blair idly flipped through the pages of _The Cursed Child_. “Perhaps it would be doable. But only with a ‘true time turner’ designed for going that far into the past. Remus has no such device, he utilized a spell of your making.”  
>  The interloper scowled. “You’re just saying that to make my life more difficult, aren’t you? Come on, you let him go back to the 1960s timeline once already!”  
> “And then he came right back here after, what, a month? I only agreed to send him back because of the after-July loophole. That no longer applies.”  
> “Then I guess I’ll just have to find a new loophole,” the interloper grumbled.  
> “By all means try,” Blair said. “In fact, I hereby give Remus clearance to go back. But only if neither you nor I directly use our...more heavy-handed world-changing capabilities to send him there. No creating new brothers out of whole cloth, no leaving out a magical device that can send him home, nothing of that sort.”  
> “Let him do anything on his own merits?” the interloper asked. “Fine. As long as he can get help from all the other characters and use any concepts I’ve already stated or implied to exist to their fullest potential.”  
> “That was a bit more leeway than I was expecting to give you, but I’ll trust your judgment to not make a deus ex machina,” Blair said, extending his hand out to the interloper. “At the very least, I expect you to agree that from this point forward, neither you nor I will interact with these characters and that whatever Well settings that are currently place will remain as such.”  
> The interloper raised a single finger. “Can I at least leave Remus one last message to let him know what’s happening?”  
> Blair shrugged. “I suppose that’s fair.”  
> The interloper quickly wrote a note within _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ for Remus to read later, then took Blair’s proffered hand and shook it. “No more interference.”  
>  “No more interference,” Blair agreed. “Oh, and one more thing.”  
> The interloper winced. “What?”  
> Blair smiled. “Welcome back. Do you know what you’re going to do with this story of yours?”  
> “Not entirely, yet,” the interloper admitted. “But I’m working on it.”

Everything resumed existence.

Remus came to, shivering. Not existing was something like when he'd been a mindless werewolf, only much worse: those nights of powerlessness only lasted the night; this one had gone on for months, maybe years. It was impossible to tell, since the Well of Lost Plots didn’t exactly come with a clock or interact with the outside world properly.

He picked a direction and started walking. It didn’t take long (or rather, didn’t seem to--again, no time in the Well) to find Lysander and the author of _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ talking.

“Hasnohumhear is a perfectly fine name!” Lysander was saying.

“I don’t want people thinking I can’t hum or hear, they already can’t see me,” the author replied.

“You already said Hshh didn’t have enough vowels, now there’s five of them!”

“Why are you even trying to give me a new name?” the author complained. “I don’t need one. ‘Author’ works just fine.”

“What if someone starts confusing you with the interloper?” Lysander asked. “Or the creator?  Both of them count as authors too!”

“It’s possible,” Remus cut in. “I have no idea what you or those two look like, so you three might look exactly the same for all I know.”

“Remus!” Lysander cried, running to give the werewolf a _far_ too tight hug. “You’re back!”

“Lysander,” Remus choked out. “Need. Air.”

“Says who?” Lysander retorted, squeezing him even tighter. “I’m not convinced you’ve breathed even once in all your time in the Well.”

"Welcome back," the author said, something of a smile in his voice.

The hug mercifully ended but Lysander stayed in Remus’ personal space. "What did the interloper say? We were wondering when something was going to happen."

Remus tilted his head in confusion.  "Didn't you notice that we stopped existing for a while?"

"Isn't that always our fate when we humans go to sleep, only to rise again triumphantly when the night is o'er?" Lysander asked, flaring his arm upward dramatically.

Remus did his best to exchange a glance with the author. It didn’t work (for obvious reasons) so Remus fell back on using his words to communicate with the unseen wizard. "Shouldn't _you_ be the one to talk flowery, being an author and all?"

"Hey, I just wrote my memoir," the author defended. "Lysander is the Antipodean Opaleye here, not me."

“I’m a human being, thank you very much--and how do we know that _you’re_ not the one who is secretly a dragon?” Lysander countered. “If I can’t see you that means I can’t see that you’re not a dragon.”

“I’m pretty sure being a werewolf and being a dragon are mutually exclusive,” the author deadpanned.

“Ah, well, I guess there’s that,” Lysander conceded. “Wait: Remus, you said something about noticing our non-existence? Meaning that you _did_ notice it?  In the interest of gaining knowledge for its own sake, what was it like?”

"I guess you could say it was like an extended coma,” Remus said, looking away from the man. “Except I got stuck being aware of my lack of actuality the whole time. Anyway, since I wasn’t back in the Outlands when I popped back into being, I haven’t seen the interloper since. We need to figure out why she brought me back."

“The Outlands is author business,” Lysander said. “And by ‘author’ I mean our author. And by ‘our author’ I mean the one who wrote _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ , not the interloper who brought us into existence. And by 'brought into existence,' I don’t mean the creator, I mean--”

“We get it, Lysander,” Remus said.

“See, _this_ is why we need to come up with a better name for him,” Lysander said.

“How about ‘Mr. Author’?” Remus suggested. “The other two author-types are both female.”

“I’ll take it if Lysander will _stop bugging me about it_ ,” the author--Mr. Author--relented. "Moving on: Remus, did you check my book to see if the interloper left any messages?"

“I left it at my old house before I transformed--” Remus started to say, then hit his forehead. “Right, being in the Well will let me just summon a copy of the book into existence.”

Said copy of _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ appeared in Remus’ hand and he flipped through the pages for anything handwritten. In the Afterword, the interloper had scrawled something in the margin.

_I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do with you but I’ve decided that I know enough to bring you back into existence. Don’t seek out Blair or me, we’ve decided that noninterference on our part is for the best going forward. Now I’ll stop breaking the fourth wall and let you get back to doing something productive while I stay out of your way. If you want something done, do it yourself._

_All my love,_

_the interloper_

Remus flipped through the book one more time, just in case anything else appeared, but only what had been written previously was there. He turned back to his two Well companions. “Would either of you happen to know what the fourth wall is?"

"It's what usually protects us from interacting with the non-imaginary plane," Mr. Author said. "Why?"

"It was something the interloper mentioned,” Remus said, pointing to the passage. “She was breaking it just by writing to me, apparently."

Lysander laughed as he skimmed the note. "It'd be more accurate to say that, for us at least, there is no fourth wall. Although now that I think about it, maybe she was trying to give you one final hint before she went mum forever."

Remus waited for Lysander to go into details. The blond, for once, didn't continue on his own. Remus sighed, and vocalized the question. "Are you going to explain the hint or not?"

"Nah, if she'd wanted you to have the answers right now (and this is me assuming that there actually _is_ a hint hidden in the message and that what I noticed isn't some red herring or forgotten plot thread), she would've said it outright," Lysander said. "You'll have to figure it out on your own time. Earn it, so to speak--like the rest of us non-protagonists."

"Have you ever actually been helpful?" Remus muttered.

"Well, I enabled George to send you back in time, does that count?"

Remus flicked Lysander's ear with a stinging hex in response. It’d been awhile since he’d used the spell, not since James and Sirius had had a particularly horrible idea and Remus had needed to make sure they didn’t try to exercise their brains in that direction ever again. A part of him wished he still had them around. Even just Sirius would have been nice.

But it was Remus’ own fault for getting involved with time travel. Old George had given him plenty of warnings and Remus had listened to none of them. At least he still had friends by his side.  Friends who, in all honestly, were more accepting and helpful than Remus probably deserved, but he probably should've expected as much from the grandson of the nicest magizoologist in the world and the werewolf author that Remus had looked up to since he was a teenager.  He might not want to make the Well of Lost Plots his permanent home but, with a little help from his friends here, he could accomplish something great.

Or, at the very least, they could forestall the possibility of becoming non-existent again anytime soon.

**Author's Note:**

> So...I’m back! I wasn’t sure if that was actually going to happen or not, but time away from Remus’ story helped generate some new ideas. I’ll try to update this fanfic on fanfiction.net once a week, but since I’m still working out some kinks, I won’t make any promises except this one: that there won’t be a cliffhanger as brutal as last time. Anything else happening is fair game, though. Mua ha ha.  
> All my love,  
> pisoprano


End file.
